


how light carries on endlessly

by jaystrifes



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 4+1 Things, Air Nomads (Avatar), Angst, Avatar State, F/M, Identity Issues, Kyoshi/Rangi (mentioned), M/M, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Red Lotus (Avatar), Roku/Sozin (mentioned), Seasonal, Spirits, sorta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26226337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaystrifes/pseuds/jaystrifes
Summary: Four times Katara and Zuko met Aang's past lives, and one time Korra's past life met them.
Relationships: Aang & Korra (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 170
Collections: Zutaraang Week





	how light carries on endlessly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "avatar state" for zutaraang week 2020. 5 drabbles, 200 words each (+10 for the subheadings).

_1\. Yangchen_

Aang’s hands, holding the needle and a pot of sky-blue dye, trembled. Beyond the curtain, friends and family awaited the ceremony.

“I don’t know if I can do this alone,” he whispered, gray eyes watery in the golden autumn light slanting in through the high windows of the atrium. Katara laid a gentle hand on his wrist and gave him a meaningful look.

When she opened the curtain, the Air Nomad who swept out was a serene woman in a yellow dress. A hush fell over the room. If Tenzin was at all alarmed, he quieted with his mother at his side, and sat as still as he could.

Yangchen painted the arrows with her fingers first as a guide, then set needle to skin, starting with the forehead. “We begin here, where it is the most painful, so that our peace becomes greater as we move along,” she said, in a voice like ethereal chimes. “The entire process will take days, and months after to heal. But you will endure.”

As the shadows lengthened, her hands melded back into Aang’s, tenderly drawing the needle down Tenzin’s nape. Smiling through tears and faintly glowing eyes, he met Katara’s gaze, calmed.

_2\. Kuruk_

For the first time since the war’s end, Aang found himself unable to call upon the spirits to dance for the winter solstice.

It was still a point of contention for the elders that an outsider, even the Avatar himself, should play such a large role in the Glacier Spirits Festival, but they were all equally disgruntled when he fell short. Fed up with their grumbling, Katara snapped at them to be quiet and let him concentrate on his meditation.

In an instant after his tattoos began to glow, though, another man rose in his place, broader in the shoulders and dressed in Northern furs. It was hard to discern whether the elders’ silence was a good sign.

With little trouble, Kuruk showered them all in an ornate waterbending display, mimicking the waves of the lights. He almost seemed to puppeteer the spirits themselves, making violet and green dance overhead.

While everyone was captivated by the display, he approached Katara, eyes too intent for comfort. “Your Aang would do well to sort out the matters of his heart before he opens it to the spirits,” Kuruk said, reaching a hand to her necklace. “Otherwise, they may feed on his unrest.”

_3\. Kyoshi_

On their travel down from the budding Republic City for Avatar Day, they stopped in the meadows north of Chin Village, ostensibly to let Appa rest. As they continued on foot, he lumbered easily alongside Aang, who didn’t look back at Zuko until he crested the hill.

They’d set out before first light, but now the sun’s early golden rays peeked through the predawn gray, changing Aang’s face strangely. Her eyes were darker, greener, against the white-and-red paint glistening on her skin. She would have towered over Zuko even on level terrain.

He put it to the stress of the past week, how Aang had been flickering out of himself since Zuko reacted poorly to his rescue from an assassination attempt. A crowd had seen Aang fiercely cradle him through the blinding white glow; it was too hard to feel safe in his embrace under the onlookers’ scrutinous stares.

“I loved a firebender, too,” Kyoshi declared. “I know what it is to be burned.” 

Her imperious tone made Zuko wince, but her brow softened when she plucked a spring wildflower, a carmine-speckled lily, and brushed it under her nose.

“But she knew what it is to show warmth, as well.”

_4\. Roku_

Since reconciling with his closest past incarnation, Aang had made a habit of visiting the barren island every summer solstice. It was after years of careful deflections that Zuko finally agreed to join him.

When he arrived on Druk in the afternoon, having given Aang the morning to commune alone, there was only one figure waiting. He sat encircled by greenery that poked through the cracks in the porous black earth, facing the sun with his back to Zuko.

“Do you know, you stand in the very spot my friend did, before he betrayed me?”

Druk snarled lowly, ready to come to Zuko’s defense or strike first. Zuko tightened his fingers in his dragon’s mane, restraining—himself or Druk? Aang thought he needed this, but Aang was wrong, this time. Roku’s voice was just one more to remind him he’d be better off a pyre.

Then his great-grandfather rose and regarded him with watery eyes. Zuko’s fists uncurled slowly, uncertainly. 

“I have long wished that he was never so important to me,” Roku said in a mere rasp, almost penitent. “But if there is one good thing to come of the joining of my path with Sozin’s, it is you.”

*

_5\. Aang_

She was cold, too numb to be afraid, and Aang knew her distress as if it were his own (trapped in the iceberg again) when he awoke through her in a blaze of light.

The frozen shell around her shattered. With a combined fury coursing through his spirit, he rose and summoned a spiraling gale, driving the assailants back. Through his bright glare, Aang just barely made out their young faces, cheeks sliced by the whipping winds, and he hesitated. 

What mattered was getting Korra to safety. He turned towards the village, only to meet the worn, heart-wrenchingly familiar visages of the two people he loved most.

“Aang?” their lips mouthed, inaudible over the howling wind.

There was no time to respond before an explosion blasted behind him, quickly intercepted by a wave of snow and flame. Though he longed to help, he felt himself fading already. His last strength calmed the storm to a breeze (the same brisk-warm air that stirred the leaves to fall when they'd walked the air temple together, hands entwined). He couldn’t risk overexerting little Korra further.

Aang left her at peace, knowing that Zuko and Katara would protect her, just as they promised him.


End file.
